Standards for Jazz Band – TQ Project

Teacher Quality History

Teacher Quality is a program enacted by SF 277 in 2007 to provide funds for teachers to engage in professional development. Ankeny chose to implement these funds by allowing us to apply for the money to be used:

to support current goal work and Individual Teacher Professional Development Plans focused on one of the following:

content specific professional development,

further development of Professional Learning Communities,

research-based instructional strategies, or

Ankeny Instructional Framework.

Each team can use the Teacher Quality money to link directly to their Iowa Teacher Professional Development Plan (ITPDP) in one or more of the following ways:

To pay for substitutes (subs can not be used on Mondays or Fridays) for peer observations in or outside district,

To pay for substitutes to attend a conference,

To pay for off-contract time to engage in new learning (i.e. – book study) and to plan for use of the new learning,

To purchase professional resources to support continued learning based upon the ITPDP, and/or

To fund a unique or differentiated plan which fits within the goals of improved student learning. If your team has differentiated professional needs connected to your ITPDP, please visit with the building principal for guidance.

We have used the TQ money to help fund our attendance at The Midwest Clinic in Chicago each December. This year, there were additional funds available, so we applied for time and resources to meet as a PLC and establish power standards for our 7-12th grade jazz bands.

The What

Much of the time we spent worked backwards from the top high school group (Jazz Collective) to our first groups (7th Grade). As team, we identified the skills we wanted students in Jazz Collective to be able to do:

First, we started with bass! Mike Steinel recommends helping students build a pattern from the chord symbol either ascending (1 2 3 5) or descending (8 7 6 5). If we take a look at a bass:

The vertical column beneath 0 represents each of the open strings of the bass from lowest sounding (top string) to highest sounding (bottom string). The numbers across the top row represent each of the 12 frets. The notes in the cells below represent the possible notes on each fret. The red dots correspond to those on the neck of an electric bass.

Mike recommended using different scales to correspond to different kinds of chords:

Major Scale = Major Chord

Dominant Scale = Dominant Chord

Dorian Scale = Minor Chord

Locrian Scale = Half-Diminished Chord

Whole-Half Scale = Full-Diminished Chord

With the help of my classmate and colleague, Jim DePrizio, we were able to build some finger patterns for each scale pattern:

0 corresponds to an open string; 1 to pointer finger; 2 to middle finger; 3 to ring finger; 4 to pinky

This progression should start on the E string, 6th fret. Because of the design of the bass, moving to the IV chord just means moving up a string! The nice thing about this progression is the last beat of measure 8 (F played with 4th finger on the A string, 8th fret) is the same as the first beat of measure 9 (F played with 2nd finger on the A string, 8th fret)!

You’ll notice that if a chord repeats, we change direction. If the student isn’t ready, they can just repeat the same pattern. We also get some easy transitions if we start descending instead of ascending:

Piano/Guitar
Again taken from Mike Steinel, much of what we do on piano is able to be transferred to guitar. We want to build chords in the left hand to leave the right hand free to improvise or augment our comping. There are two categories of chords Mike recommends:

Numbers within the categories represent chord members

Middle C should always occur between fingers 1 and 5. Right Hand can play triads, octaves, descending 4ths from the root or the 5th, or improvise.

Next Steps

Moving forward, we need to determine how we are going to implement these standards and strategies in each of the different ensembles. How are we going to ensure students develop into jazz musicians capable of playing in Jazz Collective and/or after high school? Using TQ funds, we purchased a few perusal copies of a few different resources:

We are looking at how to implement these method books as a way of teaching the standards we identified above. We are also looking at creating a library of video/audio to demonstrate sound concepts for big bands and soloists. The biggest first step will be to spend time with our rhythm section players before and outside of rehearsals with the full jazz ensembles.